purring to some new-born kittens.  He knew there were kittens because it was plain now what the tiny squeak had been, and it was made plainer by the fact that he heard another much more distinct one and then another.  They had all been asleep when he had come into the cellar.  If the mother had been awake, she had probably been very much afraid.  Afterward she had perhaps come down from her shelf to investigate, and had passed close to him.  The feeling of relief which came upon him at this queer and simple discovery was wonderful.  It was so natural and comfortable an every-day thing that it seemed to make spies and criminals unreal, and only natural things possible.  With a mother cat purring away among her kittens, even a dark wine-cellar was not so black.  He got up and kneeled by the shelf.  The greenish eyes did not shine in an unfriendly way.  He could feel that the owner of them was a nice big cat, and he counted four round little balls of kittens.  It was a curious delight to stroke the soft fur and talk to the mother cat.  She answered with purring, as if she liked the sense of friendly human nearness.  Marco laughed to himself.

“It’s queer what a difference it makes!” he said.  “It is almost like finding a window.”

The mere presence of these harmless living things was companionship.  He sat down close to the low shelf and listened to the motherly purring, now and then speaking and putting out his hand to touch the warm fur.  The phosphorescent light in the green eyes was a comfort in itself.

“We shall get out of this—­both of us,” he said.  “We shall not be here very long, Puss-cat.”

He was not troubled by the fear of being really hungry for some time.  He was so used to eating scantily from necessity, and to passing long hours without food during his journeys, that he had proved to himself that fasting is not, after all, such a desperate ordeal as most people imagine.  If you begin by expecting to feel famished and by counting the hours between your meals, you will begin to be ravenous.  But he knew better.

The time passed slowly; but he had known it would pass slowly, and he had made up his mind not to watch it nor ask himself questions about it.  He was not a restless boy, but, like his father, could stand or sit or lie still.  Now and then he could hear distant rumblings of carts and vans passing in the street.  There was a certain degree of companionship in these also.  He kept his place near the cat and his hand where he could occasionally touch her.  He could lift his eyes now and then to the place where the dim glimmer of something like light showed itself.

Perhaps the stillness, perhaps the darkness, perhaps the purring of the mother cat, probably all three, caused his thoughts to begin to travel through his mind slowly and more slowly.  At last they ceased and he fell asleep.  The mother cat purred for some time, and then fell asleep herself.

XV